Released: 4th September
Seen: 1st December
In 2022, a little film called Bullet Train came out that asked the logical question, “What would happen if you put Brad Pitt on a Japanese bullet train full of assassins?” The answer was a pretty fun movie with a lot of wild over-the-top cartoon characters, a lot of inventive action scenes with stunts by a guy who did a lot of Marvel work and the director of Atomic Blonde and Deadpool 2. It was the kind of film that was just balls to the wall fun, at times those balls made their way through the wall because they were slammed against it with such velocity. It was also a pretty big hit, and like a lot of big hits, it’s almost required for someone to try and make a knockoff version of it. Enter Fight or Flight, which takes Brad Pitt and replaces him with Josh Hartnett and jams some wings on the train to turn it into a plane. With that, you have another pretty damn fun movie.
Fight or Flight doesn’t waste time getting to the fun stuff. We’re quickly introduced to Lucas Reyes (Josh Hartnett), a former FBI agent who was cut off from the agency and left to spend his life hiding in Bangkok. Lucas is given a call by the current boss of the agency Katherine Brunt (Katee Sackhoff) that she will be able to get him back home and back in the agency’s good graces. All he has to do is get on a plane, find a mysterious criminal nicknamed Ghost and bring them back alive. This sounds like a simple plan that couldn’t possibly go wrong… except it soon becomes apparent that the plane in question is loaded with people who want to find and kill this mysterious Ghost before the plane makes it home so it’s up to Lucas to find them first, stop a plane load of killers and just in general try to make it back home in one piece.
Fight or Flight is the kind of film that knows it’s gloriously stupid and revels in the madcap silliness of everything going on. Sure, it might throw in a few important ideas into the mix, touching on topics of child slave labour being used to make the very device you’re reading this on, for example, but most of the time it’s just being very silly and enjoying it. From the minute the film opens to show the kind of insane carnage that we’re about to enjoy, all set to the tune of the Blue Danube, you should have a pretty good idea of the tone of the film and if it’s going to be for you. It doesn’t really hide its intentions, it’s going to be a very over the top kickass film where everyone’s a little quippy, heads can be slammed into sharp pointy things at any second and somehow everyone managed to do all this on a plane in a post 9/11 world… you either go with it or you don’t, the film isn’t holding back for you.
The film certainly tries to have a few moments that are somewhat more than the silly fun stuff, a couple of dramatic reveals about the Ghost criminal’s identity or things to do with the FBI characters, but really, they’re just there to give the silly fun action scenes a basic story to hang off of. The reveals are there so the story technically has some dramatic beats here and there, but they’re less “reveals” and more “punchlines” because it’s just funny that the Ghost is who it ends up being, and then they move on. Someone gets revealed to be a particularly bad guy, then it gets dealt with quickly enough not to matter. It’s not the important part of the movie; it’s there because they need to have something to heighten the tension, but it’s not really important.
What is important as far as Fight or Flight is concerned are the action scenes, and it must be remarked that, for a film taking place almost entirely on a commercial aeroplane, they found a lot of really fun ways to kick ass. Every possible thing you could think of using in an aeroplane to kick the crap out of someone is used here, from seatbelts to coffee pots to the overhead compartments, all get used in some way. People are thrown about left and right in wild, hilarious, over-the-top ways, so much so that by the time they find a chainsaw, you really just shrug and go along with it. Sure, of course someone got a chainsaw on this flight, that makes total sense in this universe and by the time it happens, you’re not even going to want to question it because of course you want to see someone going at a crowd of bad guys with a chainsaw, you’re only human!
There’s an undeniable insane energy to the whole film, most of it coming directly from Josh Hartnett, who manages to bluster and charm his way through some absolutely insane bullshit that the film makes him do. The whole cast really just grabs on with both hands and goes for broke, managing to sell every comedic beat and action scene with an unbelievable ease. It’s really impressive how everyone just gets the material and elevates it so much. Everything from dramatic fight banter to a silly discussion about the book rights to Sully’s landing can all work and feel like they’re part of the same universe. It really never feels like it’s lost the core tone of what it’s going for; it helps when the main tone you’re going for is “Madness” but they still keep within it.
The one thing that Fight or Flight does kinda have going against it is that the parts where they do try to have a plot can be a little bit convoluted, the special device that’s kind of the core of the film isn’t explained in the best ways and there are some elements right near the end that are kind of silly even by this film’s high standards. They don’t take you fully out of the film, per se, but it is the kind of little detail that really feels off on reflection. There’s also just a few too many loose ends for my liking, especially for a film that doesn’t exactly lend itself to franchising, where they could tie up those loose ends. I get that they want the ending to have a dramatic moment to send the audience on their way, but if that end makes me feel like there’s still stuff left to do and knowing there’s no way it’ll get done, that’s a problem.
Despite that, Fight or Flight is a genuinely fun time. Sure, it really does feel like it’s borrowing notes from Bullet Train and other films like it, but it does a good enough job of working those notes into its own thing that I’m more than happy to let that slide. If you’re going to copy someone else, at least do it well enough that it won’t end up mattering too much. This is one of those really fun switch-your-brain-off movies where you can just enjoy a bunch of eccentric characters kicking ass in a confined space for 90 minutes… and again, there is a chainsaw at one point, I feel like that is an important thing to remember!
Movie Meister Reviews 